GM expands its car sharing service for Uber and Lyft drivers

Maven Gig, the car-sharing service for gig economy workers owned by General Motors, is expanding to a few more cities. Starting today, the service is available in Los Angeles. Later this fall, it will launch in Boston, Phoenix, and Washington, DC. And Baltimore and Detroit will follow soon after.

The program is aimed at drivers for rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft, and delivery apps like Postmates, GrubHub, and InstaCart. Someone who’s interested in driving for any of these on-demand services, but doesn’t own a vehicle, can rent a Chevy Bolt through Maven Gig for $229-a-week. The weekly price includes insurance, maintenance, and electric vehicle charging.

Maven first launched its gig worker product last May in San Diego and San Francisco. Since then, Maven says its customers have logged 170 million miles driving for various on-demand apps.

Just last November, Maven announced that it was partnering with Uber in San Francisco on a 90-day pilot program. Drivers could take out GM vehicles for $179 a week plus additional taxes and fees to earn money on the ride-sharing platform. The deal raised more than a few eyebrows at the time considering GM was a major investor in Uber’s main rival, Lyft.

When it launched in January 2016, GM said that Maven would be its new “personal mobility brand,” reflecting a trend in the auto industry of spinning off new, millennial-friendly businesses as a hedge against perceived declines in personal car ownership. Since then, Maven has grown to 17 cities in the US and Canada, boasting 35,000 members who have made more than 45,000 reservations. Maven says that users in 11 of those cities have reported using the car-sharing service to make money driving for companies like Uber and Lyft.